


Rebel Without a Laundry Pile

by OldChum



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Comedy, Family, Gen, Not a Serious Character Piece, Warm Happy Times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 21:10:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3951859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldChum/pseuds/OldChum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tom Paris deals with the fact that he might be a tidy person.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rebel Without a Laundry Pile

**Author's Note:**

> I wish I could explain how come I felt the desperate urge to write this at 3:00 in the morning. (Booze? Would you believe booze?) But I can't. I can only hope you enjoy it.

 

 

Ship shape.

Up to standard.

Tom Paris looked around his quarters and noticed, for the third time that month, they were tidy. And neat. Like an _officer_ lived in them. There was even a decorative vase in the middle of the table, which was terrible, because all of the stuffiest people in Starfleet had stupid looking vases.

If his father were to see that room, he decided, he wouldn’t have anything to complain about. He’d probably say that it was “just fine.”

Damn it.

If an expert on the links between interior decorating choices and psychological types were to see that room, she might say it was “well-organized.” The owner was clearly someone who had spent the majority of his youth and adult life in institutionalized discipline, favoured Spartan furnishings, used the rooms – clearly provided as quarters – in a functional and reasonable way, but added enough personal touches that it didn’t seem as though the inhabitant was particularly obsessive. She might be able to guess he’d been incarcerated, since he didn’t like having a lot of cushions.

Was that a thing? When his fellow inmates got released back into the general population, would they also look at a sofa full of shimmery cushions and wonder what the hell they were all _for_? Like a couple of cushions, yes. Fine. But sometimes Tom wasn’t even sure if somebody could sit on one of those sofas he’d seen in other people’s quarters. Like it was no longer the jurisdiction of the Federation; it belonged to the cushions now.

Maybe if he put the vase in a cupboard…

Just for a couple of days…

The vase was not the problem. It was a fine example of a vase. It wasn’t one of those shapeless, purple-hued, admirally looking vases. It was red, and sleek, and kind of reminded Tom of a race car from the 20th century, and those were not the kinds of things that needed to be hidden. Besides, it had been a birthday present from Harry like a million birthdays ago, and Tom could practically hear the exchange:

“Where’s that vase I gave you?”

“Oh, I just thought I’d change things around.”

“Was it B’Elanna? She doesn’t like it. I guess, you know, she’s got a vote in how you decorate.”

“No, she’s never said anything about it, actually.”

“So it’s you. You hate the vase.”

“I don’t _hate the vase_ , Harry. I like it.”

“You could have said something sooner! Now it’s too late to replace it!”

Nope. Moving that vase was more trouble than it was worth, and it probably wouldn’t deal with what the real problem was. It would be like putting a bandage on his arm to try and stop his headache. The problem was… the neatness.

Something had to be done about the neatness.

Tom Paris was not a tidy mid-ranked officer. Tom Paris was a renegade.

He went into the bedroom, scooped up the comforter, and dropped it right on an armchair in the living area.

A blanket from the bedroom was in the living room.

Tom smirked triumphantly.

He glanced at the time. B’Elanna would be by in a few minutes to drop something off, and then she’d get a glimpse of how the _real_ Tom Paris lived. Blankets all over, wherever the hell he wanted.

Except…

Maybe it shouldn’t be a blanket. Or, at least not the comforter. The comforter was obviously not just a bedroom blanket, but from the bed. What if she thought that he spent the night in the living area? Sleeping in a chair for no reason, like some kind of chair hobo? That wasn’t the real Tom, the real Tom was a renegade, not a lazy living-room-sleeping-person.

But, then, a real renegade doesn’t care if somebody thinks they’re lazy.

Yeah, but, B’Elanna wasn’t just _somebody_ , she was special.

He quickly gathered up the comforter and put it back where it belonged.

 

* * *

 

 

It was hard to believe that Voyager had been back in the Alpha Quadrant for a year.

The young man who’d been practically blackmailed into a one-time assignment had morphed into a husband and father. A man with priorities. Both he and B’Elanna had taken time off to adjust to all the changes that had taken place while they were in the Delta Quadrant, and look after their baby.

Now it was time to get back in the game.

There were a handful of offers, but the one Tom liked the best was a civilian position engineering public transportation shuttles on an idyllic resort world. The infrastructure they had in place was sorely in need of an update, and Tom had gained a reputation for ingenious problem-solving using limited resources.

The planet was nice enough. B’Elanna was looking at what their living situation would be like, considering her own options if they chose to stay, ferociously vetting the educational institutions, and probably intimidating the life out of a childcare applicant.

Tom was having his interview, although it had felt much more like a showcase of the company.

The building he would be working in was light, airy, and open. The walls overlooking the serene, pale green ocean were made entirely out of light-sensitive glass, and the view was spectacular. There was a recreational area, and a station full of desks where a handful of people were working away, and a break area where other employees were having snacks and gossiping.

“This is it!” His tour guide, an enthusiastic young Efrosian, held his arms out like he was presenting Tom with a fairy tale come to life.

“So, this is the communal area?” Tom furrowed his brow, “Meaning that my office would be…?”

“This is the workspace,” the guide explained patiently, with a knowing smile on his face. “We don’t have a fixed schedule, or a fixed location for any of our employees. It’s a loose, choice-based environment. You can work here if you want to, or you can work at home – keep an eye on your daughter – or you can even spend all day on the beaches! Meetings are held over com links at pre-arranged times, and your colleagues and you will send each other daily updates on your progress. You should know that a few of the people on your team… dislike discussing matters in person.”

“I see.” Tom nodded, looking around the room again.

He noticed somebody eating at a table in the area where people were working, and someone else working on their computer in the middle of the room, and some people hanging around in corners of the space, muttering into communication devices.

This would not work for hands-on innovation.

Or maybe it would work fine, just not for him.

He smiled and nodded through the rest of the tour, trying not to look as disappointed as he felt.

How the hell was he going to explain this to B’Elanna? “Yeah, no. They told me I could see you and the baby all the time and I thought to myself: ‘This is not the job for me!’”

How the hell was he even rationalizing this in his own mind? Renegade badass Tom Paris was not going to take a job _building shuttlecrafts_ in _paradise_ because… why exactly?

Because it was too unfocused. He was a solo genius, he freely admitted that, but he’d grown accustomed to bouncing ideas off a team. Face to face. Arguing, fighting for concepts, listening to people’s suggestions, watching the lightning go off in somebody else’s head and letting that trigger an electrical storm of creativity in his own. He liked regular briefings at the end of the day, butts in the chairs across from his, and everybody working on the same goals at the same time.

This place wasn’t…

Oh no.

This place wasn’t _structured_ enough.

It didn’t escape the Efrosian’s notice that part way through the interview, Tom Paris turned a very pale shade of green, stared off into the distance and began nodding absently at everything being said. Though he never found out what, exactly, he’d done wrong, he wasn’t surprised when the position was filled by a different candidate.

 

* * *

 

 

Miral was four years old and playing a game called “Engineers Make Science on You!” which she had invented, and which Tom thought was great. She had a collection of small dolls, all wearing different kinds of clothing, and all of whom were very good starship engineers who were also good at fixing other stuff. They had an invisible warg, and one of them had a backpack full of candy that gave everybody ideas. It was called “Idea Candy.”

This particular session of the game had followed an epic plotline that spanned most of the play area and some of the dining room. When she was done, and the Cardassian doll had eaten Idea Candy and realized he should be nicer to horses, she looked around at all the random bits and bobs she’d scattered along the way.

“Huh.” She said, putting her hands on her hips and titling her head, just like her mom.

“Yeah, looks like a pretty big adventure happened,” Tom agreed. “Do you want some help cleaning up?”

“That’s probably a good idea.”

The two of them went to work putting the toys back in the colourful bins that Miral had in her play area. Tom just tossed them wherever they fit, since the only rule in their house was that toys had to be put away, not put away in a specific spot. He noticed pretty quickly that Miral was slyly moving the things he’d put in one bin into different bins.

“Did I put something in the wrong spot?” He asked with a smile.

“Blue toys go in the blue bin. Green toys go in the green bin. Not the red bin.”

“Sweetie, I think we can put the toys wherever we want. Because we’re renegades!” Tom told her, with a twinkle in his eye.

Miral smiled, and patted his hand sympathetically.

“If you put the toys in the right spot every time, then you can find things when you want them,” she said, very patiently.

Tom nodded, not sure what to do.

Was he not being a fun enough dad? Where was this coming from?

“It’s okay,” Miral shrugged, “Mommy puts things in the wrong places, too.”

He watched as his little girl independently colour-coded her toys, and wondered where she gotten the idea to do that. Then again, she knew that Starfleet uniforms were colour coded, so to speak, and she loved hearing about Starfleet.

“Okay!” She said, when cleaning up was finished, “Toy time is over! Let’s do a story, please!”

Tom and B’Elanna usually read her a story after playtime.

And before bedtime.

In fact, now that Tom was thinking about it, Miral had a pretty rigid schedule. Which was actually a healthy thing for her. He and B’Elanna had made her rules and plans, and had expectations for her behaviour and she… didn’t hate them.

She wasn’t stifled by structure, she embraced it.

Maybe the problem with how Tom’s father had raised him wasn’t the military precision or chain-of-command style of thinking. Maybe something else had gone wrong, early on. Some invisible element of fatherhood that Tom had never realized was supposed to be there. And because he didn’t know what it was, he’d blamed the things that were there instead.

He shook the psycho-analysing out of his head, and smiled when Miral brought him the story she wanted.

She hopped into his lap, and he kissed the top of her head before he began to read.

There was no time to dwell on his own past, when his future wanted to read “Tushtush the Sehlat Learns About Ships.”


End file.
